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Developments of the last week

This week we covered a bunch of bugfixes really, and some movement towards a completely scriptable underlying entity system for the full version. I think I’ve finally convinced MM that forking Classic and Full is a good idea, which means classic will keep the current codebase and mechanics intact and the full version will have a different underlying system.

The bonus of this is that we wont have to make considerations for classic every time we want to write a new feature, which will speed up development a whole lot.

In addition, if we get the systems we’re hoping to in place, every single object in the full version will be modifiable serverside, down to the logic controlling animation and physics. Creating new objects will be trivial. This means that KAG will be usable as a modding platform and that server owners wont be confined to the cardcoded logic of the current system.

Making new entities will be very much like programming, as we’re currently implementing AngelScript, which has C++ syntax and strongly typed objects, but we believe this is better for us as the game is coded in C++, and better for you because it’ll give you a crazy amount of control over ingame objects (you could potentially rewrite soldat in the scripting language – don’t tell MM 😉

Everything is component based at this point, which we think is a very nice way to structure things.

Its early days, but in the 2 days we’ve worked on the system its already possible to code movement and animation entirely in-script. We’re going to automate some of that (so that you dont need to keep track of timers for animation scripts and so forth) but its looking to be insanely powerful. Hopefully we’ll find a simple way of networking everything as well.

Naturally this will mean that we need some way of filtering modded servers out of the vanilla server list (if anything so that we dont get blamed for some of the less than scrupulous mods that are inevitably going to be made) , but it’ll likely just be a checkbox to swap between viewing and not viewing modified servers.

tl;dr good news for server owners, players, and aspiring developers alike.

discussion thread here

Geti

Build 360 Released!

Hotfixes:

– fixed shield jump not working

– fixed coins from destroying bodies

– fixed builder not being able to pickup rubble (0000235)

– fixed bodies not affecting playerpos (too much bugs)

– fixed admin/guard heads

– fixed colon typing on Mac (0000143)

Build 359 Released!

This patch is mostly there to fix in-game links to work with the new website. Haven’t seen it yet? Go ahead and enjoy. This is mostly the work of jrgp and SirSalami, credits go to them.

But we have fixed a lot of bugs too, some of them critical.
If you’re wondering what the numbers are next to fixes, those are the bug tracker numbers cause we are working tightly with that now. 

Changes 354-359:

– fixed linux and mac “Connect to…” not working (0000001)

– fixed player lag issue

– fixed loud sound glitch on Mac and Linux

– fixed permastun when fallen on somebody

– new body pickup icon

– added slight bump for players colliding in air to avoid dancing on head

– fixed building castle wall over trap bridge giving coins (0000198)

– added “report bugs” links to bug tracker in game launcher

– fixed manual link in game launcher

– fixed destroyed bridge turning to blue team and giving coin (0000229)

– fixed large ban number crash (0000227)

– updated all sprites to be arranged horizontally

– added a bounce on wall damage to prevent instant kill

– disabled gliding while bomb jumping/catapulting to balance horizontal power

– added a frame to knights for bomb jumping/catapulting

– made bomb knockback on standing targets smaller

– fixed flying into walls kills you (0000220)

– too high ping ban time lowered to 5 mins

– move n_Graph to the left

– if player not rcon and does rcon command it gets sent to guards as [RCON (name)] (trying to login…)

– fixed gaining stone on repairing last castle block destruction block

– fixed archer can pick up rubble rocks as arrows

– fixed guard cannot be kicked by rcon

– fixed shield stomp completely destroying

Discuss on forums

Changes large and small.

We’ve decided to be even more open about development for the next month or so to see how that goes. This basically means more developer rants on here.

We’ve fixed most of the issues introduced last build, and I will be working on the remaining few over the next few days as Michal sorts out Multiplayer Zombies. Most of them were caused by a missing line of code somewhere (such as the instakill on hitting a wall rather than damage on hitting a wall being caused by the damage not actually bouncing you off the wall).

We’re working with Ryan and Joe (our excellent tech guys) on getting an automated build process up, which would allow us to get a test build to testers every single time we make a change without actually having to do anything – same would apply for the public version. This will basically mean a more thoroughly tested KAG and less of these small yet very gameplay-detrimental bugs, as well as less change of something going wrong with patching as the files wont need to be manually published to the correct place.

We’ve been discussing what’ll need to be done for the War and Overworld modes of play in KAG. We’re designing them in tandem because the mode of play will be quite similar – War will just be on a single map with less open-ended play. The content in both of these modes will more or less be the final featureset for KAG – everything needs to fit together perfectly. Server owners will be able to mix and match this content to create new (and old) game-modes like CTF, INF, KOTH, Bomb Ball, and whatever else takes their fancy, but it all needs to work together as well.

The Classes are the most important part of KAG. In Classic, we have 3 classes with fairly general roles – the builder, the archer and the knight. We’re going to specialise classes a little more in the full version. Archers and Knights will likely keep most of their functionality, but the builder doesn’t quite fit into a game of progression in its current state.

As you can see above, there are three general areas of progression – Ranged/Support Military, Economy, and Melee military. We’ve designed these with strong interdependence in mind. The barbarian relies on knights to cover him from archer fire, and needs sappers or builders to help him break into the enemy fort to wreak havok. The knight requires covering fire from archers so that he can get past shielded enemies. The lancer requires a horse to be able to attack, and builders to make that horse a path into battle. Builders require miners and woodcutters to supply them with materials, and those miners and woodcutters require military protection from the hazards that we’re going to put in their way.

Something that I’m not really happy with in KAG at the moment is the independence of the military classes. They don’tneeda builder on the frontlines, so in public games you never see a builder on the frontlines. Knights can get themselves out of holes, archers can get themselves arrows. The builder is a helping hand but isn’t required. We’re likely to change that with the full version content.

We’re aware that mining and cutting wood isn’t currently fun at all, so you might be wondering why on earth the military progressions start with gatherer classes. Firstly, this is to make sure that military units contribute to a teams economy – they dont just run off into battle, cark it, respawn and run off into battle again. Secondly, we’re hoping to make the mining and woodcutting (especially mining) into PvE “minigames”.

Mines will be abstract entities – there might be some stone on the game maps but mostly there’ll be doors into separate mining maps, that will hopefully be separated into levels. As a mine is dug deeper and deeper, the miners will require more support from their team as they come across underground dungeons, cave animals and other hazards (as well as to help them out of the mine with ladders). Deeper mines will yield more treasure, however. Early in the game when the entire melee military is a mining gang, they’ll only be facing snakes and bats, but this will help to train them in melee combat and make sure that mining isn’t too much like hard work.

Woods will exist on the normal game map as trees and bushes still, but there will be woodland animals as well – they could be hunted for food (or eat the woodcutters). In order to make woodcutting more involved, we’re planning on having freshly cut wood as “logs” worth 1 wood each. You can use these to build wooden stuff, but it would hardly be worth your while. These logs could be refined into planks either at a carpentry shop or with a spinning saw – hopefully this means that we’ll see automated lumber mills (and horrible saw traps) once a team has a good wood economy going.

I’ll speak more about the progression system as we solidify it. Know that it wont be a rigid “tree” that you can only move upwards on. You wont be locked into your choices for each character.

We want to refresh the interface. Cleaner now than it used to be, it still feels cluttered and cumbersome. We think that the emoticon bubbles are the cleanest, most straightforward part of the interface at the moment, so I’ve drawn up this quick concept outlining how we think the interface should look.

The hearts and item count popup (top left) would appear if you had your cursor within a small radius of your character. The hearts would fade in and out if you got hit, and the item count would flash up when you used an item (ie shooting an arrow or throwing a bomb)

The inventory and actions popup would appear while you hold F. It allows you to drop stacks of items and coins by clicking them and dragging them out of the interface, to put items to and from your hands by clicking and dragging within the window, and selecting performable actions like the current F menu.

Interacting with objects and picking objects up would be done with E – all interactive objects within range would show their interface like the catapult above. Clicking the icons would perform the action specified. Same goes for workshops. Anything that could be picked up would also have a bubble around it while E was held, to be picked up by clicking. It’d go to your backpack if possible and to your hands otherwise.

Here’s a very zoomed-in concept of how it might look overlayed on the game

I know, I know, I missed out my blond hair in the mockup. Sue me.

In other news, the new site will be going live at kag2d.com today/tomorrow at 6AM US Eastern Time (8PM AET, 11AM GMT). There may be a few technical mishaps in the change-over so be sure to report any and all issues on the forums or IRC.

More to come!

Discussion thread here

Geti

Linux Fix

For those having trouble updating to the latest build, try redownloading the KAG executable from here: http://kag2d.com/update/kag_x/KAG

Place it into your KAG directory and run it.
Sorry for the delay getting this link up

Geti

Build 353 Released!

The picture explains what this update is about. We spent some time tweaking the whole carry/throw functionality. So now you can pickup a corpse, load it into a catapult and fire or… pickup a corpse, get into a catapult, have someone launch you and drop the corpse midair on someone’s head!

Imagination is the limit.

To make this easier the catapult controls are hopefully more intuitive. The menu stays but you can now use [E] and [LEFT CLICK] on it without going into the menu. So:

• if you are carrying something it puts it in the catapult by default by simply pressing [E]
• if you’re not carrying anything it loads stone with [E]
• if you have no stone, you get in yourself with [E]
• walking onto a catapult and holding fire [LEFT CLICK] will pull the catapult as you enter launch mode
• also, tapping [C] will pickup the closest object if there is more than 1 on the ground near you

There’s lots of bug fixes too, so check it out. Zombie Fortress multiplayer has some bugs fixed but it’s still not officially released and supported. It should be 100% ready next week.

Changes 349-353:

– can carry corpses

– corpses are gibbable

– corpses hurt others when thrown

– if there are lots of objects on the ground closest one will be picked up on tap [C]

– fixed not being able to get out of catapult (use [E])

– quick tap [E] on catapult does most obvious action (in order of priority: put item, load stone, mount yourself)

– you can enter catapult firemode just by pressing fire on catapult

– you can now use bubbles, taunts, light bombs and fire stuff while in catapult

– fixed not being able to get in catapult while holding something

– fixed disconnected payer IP in console showing as number

– fixed female heads invisible

– tweaked carry positions for objects

– fixed throwing issues

– catapult and outpost have more mass

– made keg collision circle smaller

– names in scoreboard have a shadow for better visibility

– only names are role colored

– fixed buttons clickable under full version banner

– added player left message on server

– collapse messages are sent to guards

– guards and admins get info on rcon commands

– fixed map border visibility

– fixed server message on vote kick spam

– fixed console crash

– fixed catapult taking stone when firing dude

– more descriptive catapult usage help

– hitting wall at large velocity takes health

– boulder doesnt hurt team players now

– corpses in air collide and hurt players

– both people that collide with each other are knocked out and hurt

– fixed out of screen corpses sent through network

– fixed +/- keys voting on Mac

– auth API fixes

– throw arrow appears on all objects

Discussion thread here

Security Breach Hoax

Considering a lot of you are taking it very seriously, the security breach thing was a hoax for april fools, alongside all the Shad related hilarity. We used it as an excuse to get some fixes in that needed putting in but were too mundane to report.

Sorry if we scared some people. You’ll live 🙂

However, keep your eye on that incarnum fellow. He might not have hacked 30% of the KAG population, but he certainly might mail pornography to your grandmother. Be on the alert.

Direly Important Update (Build 349)

We’ve made a pretty bad mistake with one of the more recent updates, which added some functionality to the autoupdater. We’ve been working furiously over this weekend to solve the problem, and have finally finished the work needed to solve the problem, which we’ve put into an emergency patch.

The exploit (which we wont detail for lack of further harm) allows malicious users to inject code directly into KAG. As such, literally anything could be happening to your computer as you play. Many of the users reporting strangeness with their computers (ie the reports that tipped us off that something was awry) also report not being able to log into the forums, as their accounts have been deactivated in the database.

Reports have come in of people’s computers randomly popping up pornography, uninstalling KAG, openning hundreds of windows, consuming large amounts of bandwidth, and other blatant troll-virus symptoms.

Luckily, MM’s computer was attacked yesterday, and we were able to learn more about the technical side of the attacks.

Most of the attacks have contained some reference to urls containing ‘incarnum.net’, either grahically or as a target address for intercepted encrypted outbound traffic. It isn’t clear yet if it’s incarnum launching these attacks or someone with a vendetta against him trying to marr his name – we’re working on cracking the encrypted packets to get a clue.

We’re not sure how many computers have been affected, but regardless this patch should be the end of any new infections. Be sure to run a virus scan after installing.

I know this falls on april 1st for some of you, but this is no joke. Patch your game.

MM & Geti

Build 346 Released!

Changes 345-346:

– fixed crash on death message

– fixed full version banner dissapearing too fast

– fixed player names not appearing above heads for normal players

– fixed server crash on ban

– fixed auto-picking materials

– fixed timestamp number padding

– fixed vote kicks not banning

Discuss.